Explosions (Michael Bay and the Pyrotechnics of the imagination) by Mathieu Poulin

Quebecian fiction

Original title – Des explosions

Translator – Aleshia Jensen

Source – review copy

A quick return to one of my favorite place to read books from Quebec and one of my favorite publishers QC. Now after a thoughtful short book we have a clever comic book. Mathieu Poulin initially was a film fan (which given this book is easy to guess), but a teacher inspired him into books and writing. He has cohost a culture show in Quebec and also writes the comic piece about sport this is his debut novel.

At the age of Two, Michael Bay was adopted by Harriett Stamper, a professor of Literature at the University od California, Los Angeles (UCLA) specializing in American and French Poetry(her doctoral thesis, defended in 1964, was titled ” Transalantic Filiations: from Whitman to Ginsberg and Aragon”), and Jim Bay, a plastic surgeon in the midst of forging a reputation as a “magician” and “career-booster” among women with acting or modelling ambitions.

this gives the perfect mix of maybe what made Bay poetry philosophy and films in the beauty of films.

We are all aware of the films that Michael Bay has made. those all action films that are full of explosions and violence and a bit OTT. Well, what we have here is a book that reimagines Michael Bay as a left field man that has used his films to bring a subtle message across. He thinks everyone gathers that is what his films are about? We imagine he was into philosophy and those long films I love but my other half always says at the end what happened!! Directors that made a difference. What is shown is a man want to strive but also one that doubts he is given the appreciation he is due.So instead of bad Boys being a buddy cops film, it is a commentary on colonization hence all the badies in the film being white and Miami is a replacement for Africa. Then other films like Pearl Harbor is a thesis on what is freedom his. The rock is about understanding one’s peers. Then Armageddon is what would happen if the earth end. This rips apart Michaels life then rebuilds it as a very different version of who he is and what his movies mean. He also struggles with his being adoptive at times. But his adoptive parents are the ones that inspired his discovery of books and philosophy.

A brilliant yet restless student, michael studied and was particularly interested in the examination of identity in Shohei Imamura’s films, the influence of Noveau Roman narrative techniques in last year in marienbad , porter’s aesthetics of tableau, the poetry and temporal relationship in Tarkovsky’s stalker, the ethical dilemas raised by Serge Dubrvsky’s fiction, the post colonial discourse in Conrads Heart of Darkness, was also one of the first note the ground breaking theoretical importance of French Philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s the movement Image.

Michael was attractch to the great thinker of cinema and writers Like Conrad.

As you see this is a clever twist on the Autobiography. I know very little about Michael Bay other than his films are very OTT and sometimes more about the special effects than the story. now it is believable he could really be a man trying to be the new Goddard trying to show the woes and mistakes of the modern world through the lens of his camera. An unsung hero underrated and misunderstood! This what Mathieu has done so well this tongue in cheek book is fun. He has taken a character that has often been held up for the dumbing down of cinema plowing the same furrow when he made follow-ups to the transformer movies. It is a book that can make you laugh out loud at times it is one of those books that shows you how comic novels should be. So nect time you lick on to a Ba film just linger and think what is behind this film really !!! then turn over.